PMC Commentary

"Timeline acceleration" and advanced pixilation

Calling in light from the high realms.

What the fuck does that mean? I hear you cry. Perhaps you can figure it out, because I sure can't. At any rate, this video philosopher has dressed to the nines for his soulful tutorial, and I must say, he seems as though he's a genuinely personable fellow. But wow, is he ever off in La La Land. (I discovered this video only because I watched a John Kasich ad for Mike DeWine for Ohio governor — for maybe celestial reasons of which I remain unaware, this video popped up next.) 

   

Scholarship should be better than this

In what I found to be a disturbingly blinkered view of congressional indifference to public desires, an op-ed by political scientists Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Matto Mildenberger and Leah Stokes states:

Congress [on both sides of the aisle] doesn’t know what policies Americans support. We know that because we asked the most senior staff members in Congress — the people who help their bosses decide what bills to pursue and support — what they believed public opinion was in their district or state on a range of issues.

In a research paper, we compared their responses with our best guesses of what the public in their districts or states actually wanted using large-scale public opinion surveys and standard models. Across the board, we found that congressional aides are wildly inaccurate in their perceptions of their constituents’ opinions and preferences.

For instance, if we took a group of people who reflected the makeup of America and asked them whether they supported background checks for gun sales, nine out of 10 would say yes. But congressional aides guessed as few as one in 10 citizens in their district or state favored the policy. Shockingly, 92 percent of the staff members we surveyed underestimated support in their district or state for background checks, including all Republican aides and over 85 percent of Democratic aides.

The same is true for the four other issues we looked at: regulating carbon emissions to address the climate crisis, repealing the Affordable Care Act, raising the federal minimum wage and investing in infrastructure.

In a related column, Paul Krugman writes that the scholars' "opinion piece … seems to confirm something I already suspected: misunderstanding of what voters want is distorting both political positioning and public policy."

Hooey, hogwash and humbug.

Congressional politicians and their sycophantic aides know precisely what the public at large as well as their districts and states want; both examine opinion polls as though they're the Oracle of Delphi. No one is better informed about mass opinion than congressfolk and their staffers (who, nevertheless, mouth whatever their bosses "believe"). But of course what the public wants and what politicians' hyperactivist primary voters want can be, and usually are, completely at odds.

Hence Crackpot Inc. — its Louie Gohmerts, its Pete Sessionses, its James Inhofes — persists in spouting and legislatively advocating the most fatuous, antisocial proposals known to troglodytic knuckle-draggers, rib-scratchers and lice-pickers.

That the three social-science researchers above and Mr. Krugman (intentionally?) missed the bloody obvious is, to me, disturbing — in that the researchers' findings merely confirmed what they wanted confirmed. Scholarship is sacred, and should be more honest, for without erudite objectivity, none of us can really know the truths that lie out there.

 

Tuesday we decide: Are we a free, or Trump-enslaved, people?

After two years of official Trump as a malign windbag and two earlier years of unofficial Trump as a witless bonehead I'm as immune to shock over his boneheaded, witless comments as anyone.

Yet this morning I was indeed shocked. In a NYT op-ed, the historian Eric Foner, whose Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863 - 1877 remains the ultimate scholarship of that era, relates the following:

"In an interview with the news program 'Axios on HBO,' President Trump announced that he plans to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship [under the Fourteenth Amendment], the principle that everyone born in the United States, with a handful of exceptions, is automatically a citizen of the United States. 'It was always told to me,' the president declared, 'that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t.'"

 You do, or rather you would, unless a Roberts Kavanaugh Court agreed with Trump and decided you don't. The rule of law would then be supplanted by the whim of witlessness. As Foner adds, "If the president can unilaterally abrogate a provision of the Constitution by executive order, which one will be next?"

I've been re-familiarizing myself with quite a bit of early 1930s German history in the past couple weeks, so perhaps my skin is crawling a trifle too much about dictatorial ease in a turbulent nation. Still, many have warned that It Can Happen Here, and virtually every week we witness another step closer to such a happening — for there is no check or balance to this boneheaded president.

Tuesday of next week — that is the day our fate will be determined.

 

Local happenings

I thought you might like to see, quite briefly, some of my surroundings of late, as well as my love, and my love of impressionism.

The Detroit skyline before, during, and after a storm:

My loving companion, L. Reeves; Canada in background:

And from the Detroit Institute of Art, a gorgeous work I intend to reproduce, just as soon as I reconstitute my studio. 

I return home Thursday. I shall miss this area, much of which is quite beautiful. 

 

How can decent Republicans tolerate Trump?

In some rather awkward wording, the Washington Post writes that the Pittsburgh slaughter of 11 Jewish worshipers "has been an unwelcome interruption" of Trump's midterm rabble-rousing. Less awkward but more inaccurate is the Post's lede — that "Trump and his top aides have struggled to balance their scorched-earth campaign strategy with calls for national unity following" the massacre.

Has Trump really "struggled" with calling for national unity? To say he has relished cleaving this country into irreconcilable warring camps would be more accurate. And that's precisely what presidential historian Michael Beschloss has said: "So deep in Donald Trump’s manner of leadership is dividing in order to conquer. Even at a time of national crisis like this, you see it very much on display…. He has shown himself completely incapable of healing our wounds."

That's because Trump is the prince of grievances — his own. Narcissistic sociopaths aren't known for their warm, caring, bedside manners, the absence of which Trump demonstrates almost daily by denouncing not hate in America, but Democrats and, even more so, the press. From late last night:

CNN and others in the Fake News Business keep purposely and inaccurately reporting that I said the “Media is the Enemy of the People.” Wrong! I said that the “Fake News (Media) is the Enemy of the People,” a very big difference. When you give out false information - not good!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2018

Check out tweets from last two days. I refer to Fake News Media when mentioning Enemy of the People - but dishonest reporters use only the word “Media.” The people of our Great Country are angry and disillusioned at receiving so much Fake News. They get it, and fully understand!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2018

The choicest comeback I've seen to Trump's anti-press drivel comes from one of his former own, David Lapan, who worked as the press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security under John Kelly (now WH chief of staff, for reasons unknown). Wrote Lapan on Twitter: "Over 30+ years as a U.S. Marine, I defended our country against its true enemies. In 20+ years as a USMC, Pentagon and DHS spokesman, I dealt w/ the news media nearly every day. I know quite a bit about the press and know this — they are NOT the enemy of the American people."

I mention Lapan largely because he's such an odd duck. That is to say, rabidly anti-Trump conservative Michael Gerson asks this, this morning, of his former fellow Republicans: "How can [you] accept political leadership that expands the acceptable range of hatred? How can [you] condemn the fire in our public life when they follow a political pyromaniac?"

Gerson asks these questions in specific reference to those Republicans who "regard themselves as opponents of prejudice and especially as philo-Semites," and yet stay at Trump's vastly bigoted side. But Gerson's questions apply to all Republicans at all times, in all political situations.

 

In a more perfect world …

Emily Badger of "The Upshot" looks at the nonexistent "alternative" of 100 percent turnout:

"It’s impossible to know what would have happened had the people sitting out elections voted. But Bernard Fraga, an Indiana University political scientist, has tried to gauge that alternative reality using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which annually surveys thousands of Americans.

"The survey asks which candidates people preferred even if they did not vote. And if we add their preferences to the voting population in the last several elections, we get different election results. 'If everybody voted, Clinton wins. If minority turnout was equal to white turnout, Clinton wins,' said Mr. Fraga."

Well of course, you say. But here's the interesting part:

"Many white voters who preferred Mr. Trump sat out 2016 as well. So in this full-turnout counterfactual, Mrs. Clinton doesn’t overcome Mr. Trump’s narrow victories in Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania. Rather, she flips Florida, North Carolina and Texas."

From an admittedly anecdotal, and therefore probably flawed, view, I'm skeptical that Trump would win Michigan if the election were re-held today. I've now spent two weeks in the Wolverine State, and I've yet to encounter anyone who has a good thing to say about America's version of President Hugo Chávez. This bodes well for next Tuesday, if indeed the election materializes as a referendum on Hugo Trump.

 

I bet you "libtards" didn't know you control it all

Chutzpah incarnate:

"The GOP’s defensive posture, following Saturday’s deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history," reports the Washington Post, "came as some Trump allies sought to shift blame to others, including media figures and Democratic leaders, arguing that recent attempts by liberal protesters to challenge GOP officials in public were perhaps more responsible for the national unrest than the president’s combative politics or the rise of conspiracy theories on the right."

The Fake News is doing everything in their power to blame Republicans, Conservatives and me for the division and hatred that has been going on for so long in our Country. Actually, it is their Fake & Dishonest reporting which is causing problems far greater than they understand!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018

Just watched Wacky Tom Steyer, who I have not seen in action before, be interviewed by @jaketapper. He comes off as a crazed & stumbling lunatic who should be running out of money pretty soon. As bad as their field is, if he is running for President, the Dems will eat him alive!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2018

GOP Sen. John Cornyn, also on Twitter: “You could say Ds on defensive after encouraging the mob scene at the Kavanaugh hearings, and Booker, Waters, Holder, Clinton comments."

What's astounding about this bootless gibberish is that the party in power — complete power, with the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court and the sprawling, miasmic sewer of right-wing propaganda — continues to argue that Democratic bogeymen (some of whom are "crazed & stumbling lunatic[s]") and less-watched (than Fox News) liberal outlets are in fact the real puppet masters of American politics. The Dems, liberals and Chris Hayes are as powerless as a spinachless Popeye, yet somehow, in GOP agitprop, they are cast as all-controlling supermen of Hofstadterian renown. Even more astounding is that huge swathes of the booboisie believe it.

 

The perfect letter to the most imperfect president yet

Excerpts from a letter to that little horror of a man in the White House, from the Pittsburgh affiliate of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice (bold original):

For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement. You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday’s violence is the direct culmination of your influence.

President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you fully denounce white nationalism….

President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you stop targeting and endangering all minorities….

President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you cease your assault on immigrants and refugees….

President Trump, you are not welcome in Pittsburgh until you commit yourself to compassionate, democratic policies that recognize the dignity of all of us.

Why just Pittsburgh? Every community should renounce a visit from this vile, white-nationalist, immigrant-hating, abundantly undignified, wretchedly unAmerican president.

 

The wholesale collapse of Republican rectitude

"For months, Republican officials have complained privately that President Trump lacks the ability to confront moments of crisis with moral clarity, choosing to inflame the divisions that have torn the country apart rather than try to bring it together," observes the Times. "Even some supporters call him tone-deaf."

Who are these "officials" and supporters? Where are they? To whom have they spoken off the record? To which newspapers? What are their words of complaint about Trump's tone-deafness and moral vacuum?

Certainly not these words, from former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer: "It’s misleading to compare Trump’s behavior to his predecessors because he was elected to be different from his predecessors."

Nevertheless, Mr. Fleischer, Trump doesn't at all mind being compared to his predecessors. In fact, he flaunts it in the most asinine ways:

Very interesting! https://t.co/ZmSA4v5fKi

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2018

In the end, this was the best the Times could do in digging up a Republican complaint: "I sometimes disagree with the way the president treats people," said Rep. Steve Stivers yesterday on "Meet the Press." "I thought after the pipe bombs he initially set the right tone of unity and coming together. And I hope that he will continue on that path." Host Chuck Todd pounced on the word "initially," suggesting that Stivers believed that Trump soon failed in setting the right tone. "Mr. Stivers said stiffly, 'I said I hope he’ll continue on that path.'"

Virtually everyone already knew that Trump was altogether vacant of "moral clarity." What has startled is that he so easily took an entire party down with him, into a hole of amoral cynicism, venom and bile.

***

Clarification: Before someone comments that the Republican Party had no rectitude to lose, I mostly agree. But with the absence of Sen. McCain (and some would add, Sens. Corker and Flake, soon), the party will become even more deplorable.     

 

Because of an intolerable lack of sleep for several days, this morning my body said to hell with that noise and slept till noon — twelve hours — which I haven't done since I was a teenager. That explains my a.m. absence, which I felt bad about; I always try to get something up seven days a week. Then my lady friend and two of her friends and I attended a professional touring performance of "Arsenic and Old Lace" at Oakland University (Birmingham, Mich.), which was quite good, except for Mortimer, who bounced around the stage as though he was on a powerful amphetamine. That preceded a crab-stuffed shrimp dinner with a nice Merlot (naturally, I wasn't buying).

And with that, I didn't miss posting something today, after all. See you in the morning.        

 

The founders would have kicked Trump to the sidewalk

In an admirable piece of political reporting, the Washington Post's Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker quote former ambassador and undersecretary of state James Glassman reflecting that "It’s very hard to think of a president in American history who has been as aggressively divisive as this one and who has shown essentially no moral leadership."

Parker and Rucker more than substantiate Glassman's observation. Trumpism, they write, is "A brand of anything-goes, combative politics focused on personal attacks and demagogic rhetoric, with little consideration for the presidential tradition of providing moral clarity and unity at moments of tragedy or danger." The reporters add, among numerous other condemnations of his vastly unpresidential style, so to speak, that "Trump … has overtly and deliberately tossed aside the expected responsibilities associated with his office."

Trump's misconduct is more than the stuff of which mere nightmares are made. It's impeachable misconduct, without, it should be stressed, Robert Mueller ever returning a finding of presidential crimes. This critical point was driven home in a May 2017 op-ed by political scientist Greg Weiner (who latest work of impressive scholarship, American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, I've just begun reading.)

Weiner's argument for the non-criminal impeachment of an immoral or altogether morally indifferent president is powerful not because of what Weiner believes, but because of what the founders wrote, which was straightforward yet somehow forgotten. And the thrust was this: "Mr. Madison," as was noted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, "thought it indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the community against the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate" (italics mine). The question then proceeds with equal force: Who can argue with any degree of solemnity that Mr. Trump is not mentally incapacitated, morally negligent as well as the most perfidious of all presidents, as Ambassador Glassman observed?

As Weiner clarified the founders' intent: "The object of impeachment is not to exact vengeance. It is to protect the public against future acts of recklessness or abuse." Again, a show of hands, please, affirming Trump's unprecedented recklessness, abuse of power and abusive conduct?

Weiner concluded that we must "correct the mistaken assumption according to which presidents can forfeit the public trust only by committing what the law recognizes as a crime. That is a poor bar for a mature republic to set."

It should go without saying that Madison, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason and other founders would be appalled to a fare-thee-well that our 21st-century republic would abide the abominable likes of a Donald J. Trump. This brutish creature of mob-associated huckstering, demagogic blather, astounding ignorance and, above all, perfect amorality was precisely what the founders feared direct democracy would someday plague the nation. They were therefore wise in giving us an out: political — not criminal — impeachment.

Their only misjudgment? That our 21st-century Congress would be as morally bankrupt as the contemptible president.

 

A brief history lesson

"Trump doubled down Thursday on blaming the media for the nation’s incivility" — The Washington Post

In my recovery from this recurrent plague I've been reading an excellent, exhaustive history, Nuremberg: The Third Reich on Trial. I have therefore been reminded that the Jews were to blame for Kristallnacht, Poland was to blame for Germany's invasion of it, Austria was to blame for the forced Anschluss — and somewhere in the mix, a free press was to blame for Germany's incivility, pre-1933.

Post-1933, Germany became a veritable wonderland of peace, tranquility, and caring humanity.

 

The president of the pixilated United States

The NYT article "'False Flag' Theory on Pipe Bombs Zooms From Right-Wing Fringe to Mainstream" is not only an incisive examination of the whys and wherefores of conspiracy theories, it would seem to explain why such a childlike rabble-rouser sits in the Oval Office"

"Conspiracy theories play especially well on social media, which amplifies provocative and engaging content by design and often rewards misinformation with increased distribution. One study published this year, led by M.I.T. researchers, found that on Twitter, falsehoods were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than accurate news."

What, for instance, was more "provocative and engaging" than the concept of birtherism to explain — egads — a black man as president of the United States? Or the loss of one's job because of "illegal" Mexican immigrants? Or an imaginary rise in crime because of "illegal" Mexican immigrants as criminals?

And the list goes on, perfectly suited for the most gullible among us — whose numbers are far greater than we ever imagined.

 

"Sleuthing for Dummies" 2nd. ed.

The NY Times:

"The package intended for [former CIA director John] Brennan was sent to CNN, even though Mr. Brennan is a paid commentator for MSNBC, not CNN."

But, everything wicked this way comes — from CNN, that is, so naturally the would-be bomber directed his Brennan wrath to the Clinton News Network.

My God the stupidity of right-wing crackpots is absolutely breathtaking. I appreciate that that is no news flash; it is, however, a politico-cultural fact of life that simply cannot be expressed too often. Most right-wing crackpots stop short, of course, of mailing faulty pipe bombs to the wrong address with the wrong return address — misspelled at that — but their synapses tend to misfire with striking similarity to the elite crackpots.

The most unhinged of whom sits in the White House.     

 

"Sleuthing for Dummies"

How can we be sure the pipe bombs were the work of a right winger?

One bomb was sent to Eric Holder, "but because it was addressed incorrectly, it went to the return address."

Another, found at a Delaware post office, was sent to Joe Biden, but again, "the envelope was misaddressed and was being redirected to the return sender."

The return sender, in all cases, was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose name was misspelled.